“… after he mistakenly saved his number months before under the contact of someone else he intended to add.”
This is precisely why the government has its own very inconvenient devices and network, which cannot possibly fall victim to the same completely understandable human error. Had the team been using secure devices on the secure network, no journalist would ever have been accidentally added to the chat.
That these people are in charge of national security is beyond ridiculous. It speaks volumes about the unprecedented political setup we find ourselves in that such frankly inexperienced and naive people are in charge after Senate confirmations that were intended to protect us all from such a mistake.
When not being a Florida politician, Mike Waltz has had this role since the early 2000s (for Cheney) and believes contact fields “get sucked” through invisible series of tubes. He’s never seen a Senate confirmation and I bet never will.
There's absolutely a secure system that crosses agencies - they even refer to it in the Signal chat (see the comment about sending details to your "high side inboxes"). But you can't use that system on your personal phone, and it doesn't let you avoid record-keeping requirements by setting messages to auto-delete.
The US has been perfectly capable of executing complicated military operations for decades prior without needing to use Signal to coordinate messaging amongst heads of staff.
These people *WERE* military personnel and there is no way they haven't been repeatedly exposed to proper procedures for information handling. They absolutely should know better and deserve to face consequences for this sort of incompetence.
Mike Walz is a Special Forces officer and only retired as a Colonel from the National Guard to take his position as National Security Advisor.
Tulsi Gabbard is still a Lieutenant Colonel in the National Guard.
Pete Hegseth was a Major in the National Guard, ending his service in 2021.
JD Vance is probably the most junior of the veterans, leaving the Marine Corps as a Corporal in 2007.
Actually more capable up until now, this is naturally an historic low, completely reflecting the integrity of the Commander-in-Chief, or lack thereof, by comparison.
This is blatantly incorrect though. The NSA actually set up the DMCC phone system specifically for this purpose. They are phones with 100% of the infrastructure already set up for communicating classified or sensitive information even while abroad and they are hardened enough that they are generally considered unclassified when powered down. They come in a DMCC-S (secret) and DMCC-TS (top secret) flavor. Any somewhat senior member at any agency or department that regularly interacts with classified information could request one of these devices. They provide cross agency encrypted call, text, and other capabilities at all security levels.
"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received."
Nothing in my comment implies that what Clinton did was any more lawful. But since you raised the point, I’ll just note that it is quite interesting that Clinton’s circumstance was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, whereas in the Signal debacle, it seems Trump’s administration is going to let it go.
Why would Trump fire anyone? Voters have signaled that they no longer care how classified information is handled. Maybe they no longer know why classified information should be carefully guarded, or it's just not a priority anymore. We all remember the FBI's photos of top secret documents being stashed in the Mar a Lago bathroom and ballroom. Not only did Trump not face any consequences for that whatsoever, he actually gained votes compared to the last time he ran. Trump is behaving completely rationally here. He's not going to lose even 1% of his support base over this, so why would he take any action? It's pretty interesting that for all the decades of skepticism and distrust of the government I've heard coming from conservatives (2A to guard against tyranny, "government is the problem", etc), they're putting an awful lot of blind trust in this particular administration.
I think the setup is different than what could be explained by assuming “blind trust” is being placed in the Trump administration. Individual Republican lawmakers in Congress who might otherwise try to stop Trump by proposing legislation or objecting to his Senate candidates face the prospect of a well-financed primary challenge the next time they are up for election. Unless and until Republican lawmakers find a way to get together to oppose the administration in large numbers, most lawmakers will avoid doing so for fear of being “primaried.” Those who are indeed bold enough to act on their own are pushed out by the asymmetric opponent.
And for the individual lawmaker who tries to work with their colleagues to mount a primary-proof challenge to the administration, there is always the risk of being outed at any point in the process of organizing. Once outed, the more powerful adversary picks off the opponents one by one, with the others retreating back into darkness to avoid the same fate.
This is precisely why the government has its own very inconvenient devices and network, which cannot possibly fall victim to the same completely understandable human error. Had the team been using secure devices on the secure network, no journalist would ever have been accidentally added to the chat.
That these people are in charge of national security is beyond ridiculous. It speaks volumes about the unprecedented political setup we find ourselves in that such frankly inexperienced and naive people are in charge after Senate confirmations that were intended to protect us all from such a mistake.